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Post by Stuffed Patrol on Jul 9, 2018 19:17:27 GMT
You might want to check and see if your KENP for June is getting hit by cuts. Reports are going around now with some authors losing up to 50% of their reads.
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Post by thanos on Jul 10, 2018 2:37:05 GMT
I'm starting to think these cuts are nothing more than a beta test. Cut authors royalties 50% and see if they leave. If the vast majority do not, then they can extrapolate the impact of cutting the KENP rate by 50% across the board.
And while they are doing that, I think they are also trying to force some of the content mills to go bust. The big spenders often operate on very narrow margins and have to have a lot of things go right (ie. all star bonuses) to come out ahead. Now, you cut their payout by 50% and you literally destroy them because they are spending thousands on AMS ads... so their month doesn't finish flat, they actually end up thousands in the hole and there's not much they can do to plan ahead for these things.
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Post by AvaTar on Jul 10, 2018 3:13:27 GMT
I'm starting to think these cuts are nothing more than a beta test. Cut authors royalties 50% and see if they leave. If the vast majority do not, then they can extrapolate the impact of cutting the KENP rate by 50% across the board. I doubt that. There's no reason to believe it's anything more than Zon dealing with the bot menace. |
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jul 10, 2018 3:21:03 GMT
I don't know if I believe there even is a bot menace. I'm sympathetic to alternative amazon conspiracy theories. But of course I don't know what's really going on. Amazon does hire the cheapest programmers they can find, so of course their bots aren't going to be very good, and when said poorly constructed bots are running the store it makes sense that there'd be a ton of problems. So maybe it's glitches. I definitely don't believe they are actually taking away legit scammer bot money though. There 50% equation is too neat. They just threw some dice and came up with an easy to calculate number to use against anyone that gets flagged by amazon's "too stupid to live" bots. I could be wrong though.  |
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Post by possiblyderanged on Jul 11, 2018 11:46:41 GMT
It could be any number of things, but is likely a bot trying to root out "fake" page reads given to any author, not just the ones scamming. That makes the most sense to me. But then, I've had a theory for a while that Amazon is trying to make some of us leave KU so there's room for more authors who sell better. And yes, I know the "bookshelf" is pretty much endless, but readers do complain about not being able to find anything they like to read. I think this because every time I seem to be building up my page reads, something will happen and I'm knocked back down. Over and over and over again. It's the reason I'm only keeping some shorts in and taking everything else wide. I'm tired of messing with it.
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Post by monkeyshines on Jul 11, 2018 11:49:21 GMT
More and more I'm looking at just starting wide when I publish. Avoid these shenanigans from the outset.
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Post by gaylordfancypants on Jul 11, 2018 14:34:21 GMT
I doubt it's a way to test a cross-the board cut, I think Amazon would rather pay different amounts to different genres in order to attract the kind of readers they want. They can do this by declaring some reads scammy and not counting them. Obviously they've decided LitRPG and reverse harem readers aren't worth it, so those authors get declared scammers and don't get paid as much.
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Post by grahamcrackers on Jul 11, 2018 15:47:07 GMT
The chilling effect of the page cuts is very, very real. I am a total gamer geek girl and had just decided to write a series in LitRPG. I decided not to until I realized that I wouldn't touch KU in its current incarnation with a barge pole.
Basically, I think indies are going to have to start voting with their pens and refuse to be a part of KU until something RATIONAL is done. Things I would want to see:
1. An explained methodology that assures us that page reads are recorded correctly;
2. A highly revised bot algo for any sweeps that must be confirmed by a human ultimately, clearly the tech just isn't that smart right now;
3. An accessible and clear appeals system for people who have been mistargeted;
4. Give me a fucking break with the straight up 50% drop in reads. Really, Amazon? You think that data isn't shared and we all haven't realized that you magically think that 50% of everyone's page reads are false? How convenient that bots and scammers are contributing an exact 50% to those indies being burned by this.
Going wide is literally the only option now for anyone in my opinion because they've simply become too powerful to allowed to continue down this path (been happening for years, this is just the newest incarnation of it). Where else would the arbitrary snatch back of money be allowed? Remember, they are reporting these reads and purchases in a relatively quick manner, and then people are purchasing AMS ppc ads based on that info, adding salt to the wound when Amazon turns around and says "lol, nope, just kidding". It's an abusive monetary relationship and I can't wait until someone actually takes legal action against them. Just because you state in a contract/ToS that you can do something, doesn't actually make it legal or enforceable.
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Post by thanos on Jul 11, 2018 20:18:43 GMT
They want everyone to know they'll strip people of their reads, that's why they are doing it this way. This is more of a warning/deterrent than it is a punishment. The people getting hit are merely the means by which they send a broader message to their supply chain. Unfortunately, though, zon seems to be treating the indie community as one big amorphous blob and treating little fish the same as content mills (and I think their real target is the latter). At this point KU has so many authors (and a growing number of content mills) that you could jettison 50% of them and I doubt readers would really notice. There would still be millions of books to read of equal (and in some cases better) quality than what's getting visibility in KU today. But I also hold that this little experiment will also tell them just how much abuse authors will take. Whether they intended for this or not is irrelevant, it's one of the main things they will learn. If authors continue to stick around in KU despite random page cuts, then zon knows they are massively overpaying authors on the KENP rate (if they'll take a 50% page cut and stick around then they'll take a 50% KENP rate cut and stick around). 4. Give me a fucking break with the straight up 50% drop in reads. Really, Amazon? You think that data isn't shared and we all haven't realized that you magically think that 50% of everyone's page reads are false? How convenient that bots and scammers are contributing an exact 50% to those indies being burned by this. |
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Post by possiblyderanged on Jul 17, 2018 21:31:22 GMT
I became suspicious when we had that September Purge thing. People who had lots and lots of page reads said nothing happened to their accounts. But people like me, who had very little, to those in the middle, reported huge changes in their page reads. Why wouldn't someone like Amanda Lee not see losses, but little ol' me got hit hard? Neither of us was doing anything wrong, but she wasn't affected and I was.
Like many, I think some of this is seeing how far they can go before too many "good" authors drop out. Lower the KENPC, lower the payout, mess around with reporting, whatever they come up with to test us. I think until they realized that most of the reads coming in on those stuffed books were bots on free accounts, they thought they were making bank from them. Now it seems they realize these people are bleeding off money for no gain to Amazon.
But, maybe my tin foil hat is too tight.
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Post by writeway on Jul 21, 2018 5:27:40 GMT
I'm wide but I wondered if this was still happening. I heard some mention they'd been stripped this month but no one is talking about it as much as the previous times. Unfortunately, this seems to be the new normal in KU.
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Post by possiblyderanged on Jul 22, 2018 15:27:12 GMT
I believe the page stripping has either slowed or stopped. Hard as it was to lose that money, I do think it was because of the bots trying to hide their activity. At least, for most people. We can't say for sure that everyone who reported pages lost were on the up and up, but most I saw seemed to be. Just another way these scammers hurt us all.
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Apr 17, 2019 0:48:42 GMT
